Democrats release the rebuttal to the Republicans' FISA memo

The US Congress has released a redacted, declassified memo that aims to counter allegations by the Republicans that the FBI abused government surveillance powers in its investigation into Russian election interference.

President Trump blocked the memo's outright release two weeks ago, with the White House counsel warning that the document "contains numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages".

The memo defends the FBI's obtaining of warrants to conduct temporary surveillance of Carter Page, an associate of President Donald Trump's election campaign, whom the Democrats say "the Federal Bureau of Investigation assessed to be an agent of the Russian government".

Democrats have argued that the information presented in the Republican-drafted memo was "cherry-picked" and lacked important context that they would present in their memo.

Republicans, in their 3½-page memo, claim that top law enforcement officials seriously misled the court by failing to disclose that they were relying in part on research financed by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.

The White House rejected the Democratic memo on February 9.

The warrant request was made to the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The White House said in a statement that nothing in the Democratic memo counters Trump's statements that neither he nor his campaign colluded with Russian Federation.

"This politically driven document fails to answer serious concerns raised by the Majority's memorandum about the use of partisan opposition research from one candidate, loaded with uncorroborated allegations, as a basis to ask a court to approve surveillance of a former associate of another candidate, at the height of a presidential campaign", White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a lengthy and scathing statement.

The Schiff memo cites the FISA application's note that Steele's research appeared intended for use "to discredit" Trump's campaign, and argues that the Justice Department appropriately did not "unmask" U.S. officials in the FISA application.

The 10-page, partially-redacted document, which was posted to the panel's website today, sharply criticised a previously released Republican memo as a "transparent effort to undermine" investigations by the FBI, Justice Department and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. After it was clear Trump would win the Republican nomination, that funding stopped and the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign started paying Fusion GPS for research that ultimately would be included in the Steele dossier.